2004-01-08 - 12:10 p.m.

lately things have a feeling of being half-finished, abrupt, stopping and starting on a different, lurching, less gentle schedule.

• i locked myself out of my new apartment this morning for the very first time while taking out the trash. as a result, i was quite late to meet a at the coffee shop. we only had a few short minutes to chat.

• s and s are looking for an apartment in williamsburg (which thrills me, because s is one of my best friends). they were at the coffee shop this morning, near tears. they were meant to sign a lease for a beautiful loft this morning. but it seemed that the proposed lease had unusual hidden clauses that made them uncomfortable, and to make matters worse, the landlord was called away abruptly in the midst of their meeting. so no transaction could be completed. they were forced to drift off to work, without resolution.

• a surprisingly romantic date was brought to an abrupt halt when we ran into a terrorist alert in the subway station. the williamsburg bridge had been closed and the trains were stopped. huge chaos resulted, and i was tipsy enough to be a little disoriented. i actually lost my date in the swirl of panic. then the bridge opened, and i caught a car home.

• i've moved into my new apartment, but the majority of my furniture and belongings are still at the old place. i have movers coming monday to transition the detritus. until then, i'm in a weird limbo where i keep thinking, for example, that there's an outfit i'd like to wear or a CD i'd like to hear, but then i realise that most of my wardrobe and all of my CDs are packed in boxes and sitting at the old place. i've been driven so crazy by the feeling that i've been going over to the old place and getting a box of clothes here, a bag of kitchen utensils there, just to maintain some kind of integrity.

in times like these, i just have to power down a little. no sense in forcing anything. time to wait and see where the chips fall.